The present invention is related to computer housings and more particularly to a computer housing which is easily assembled by non-professional people.
Regular computers are generally comprised of a housing for mounting a computer mother board. According to the prior art, the computer housing is specifically designed according to the type of computer. Currently, there are several kinds of computer housings used for a variety of computers as outlined hereinafter.
1. For AT series, the computer housing is designed for mounting therein the AT mother board, a full-height hard disk drive and three floppy disk drives, and has provision for inserting 8 slot cards.
2. For XT series, the computer housing is similar to AT series. However, it is designed for mounting two floppy disk drives and no structural design is available for mounting a hard disk drive.
3. For baby AT series, the computer housing is for mounting 3 floppy disk drives and a small AT mother board.
4. For Mini Tower Case, it offers 1/3 of the functions of a Tower Case and is available for mounting a Baby AT, an XT or even an AT mother board which is equipped with 2.times.51/4" floppy disk drives and 2.times.31/2" floppy disk drives.
5. For Slim Case (PS-2), it is available for mounting a Baby AT, an XT or a PS-2 mother board which is simultaneously equipped with 51/4" and 31/2" floppy disk drives. In this design, slot cards are to be mounted horizontally by means of plug-in connection. Due to the horizontal insertion procedure, poor contact may happen frequently and the component parts of the mother board or the slot cards may be damaged easily. Further, this design is available only for mounting 3 slot cards.
6. For Tower Case, except PS-2, this design is suitable for mounting AT, Baby AT as well as XT mother boards and is available for mounting 6 floppy disk drives or 6 31/2" floppy disk drives and 8 slot cards.
In the afore-mentioned types of computer housings, there are several common disadvantages as outlined hereinafter:
1. All of the housings are of enclosed type and have to be completely disassembled, exposing all inner parts of the computer while replacing or adding a slot card.
2. The complicated mounting procedure requires professional people for disassembly. A computer may be damaged easily if the computer housing is disassembled by non-professional people.
3. A housing is generally specifically designed for one or two models and is not suitable for others.
4. Because of the enclosure type, a housing for Baby AT or Mini Tower would have to use a horizontal mounting procedure for mounting slot cards. As afore-described, a horizontal mounting procedure may damage computer component parts easily during the mounting operation and may frequently cause poor contact.